Friday, November 27, 2009

The last few days I have been thinking about putting in a small bed next to the kitchen door. This area cannot be seen from the living room as most of it is hidden behind the curtains.

So today I cleared the area for my new 3x2 bed.

Sweet Husband built me a very nice bed with some free wood we picked up a few weeks ago for the potato bins. This area will get a few hours of morning sun and about an hour of afternoon sun in the winter months. In the summer it will get about six hours of sun with shade in the late afternoon.

The new bed will be perfect for lettuce and baby spinach in the Fall and Spring, and in the summer months for my cilantro and basil, freeing up some much needed space in the main beds.

The spinach I planted in Sept in bed 4 is not growing at all due to lack of sun...

... so I transplanted it into the new bed along with some lettuce from bed 4. The rest of the bed was seeded with more spinach and lettuce.

The next step is to build a critter cage over the bed to keep the squirrels out.

Monday, November 23, 2009

I was working in the garden today doing some much needed clean up when I went over to bed 3 to see how the brocolli was doing, when I came upon a leaf that was nothing more than a skeleton of it's former self. Knowing only one thing that could do this much damage I started my hunt...

Right there hiding in plain sight I found it...yes that would be a cabbage looper. As I kept searching I found a total of six on this plant and one more on another. I really should have sprayed BT earlier in the month when I came across the first looper.

As I was hunting loopers I also found gray aphids happily sucking the live out of my brocolli floret. Nothing a good sharp stream of water couldn't handle. I will need to check on the brocolli more often to keep these peats at bay.

On a more pleasant note the sugar snap peas gave me a nice little harvest today.

This English cucumber will be ready for picking in a few days. This will be my last one for the season.

The brussels sprouts in bed 1 are growing very slowly. But what can you expect when they are only getting one to two hours of sun. Yes sadly it is that time of year when I have little to no sun in the garden.

Photo below: Brussels sprouts

Photo below: Bed 2 at 1:30 this afternoon. This is the bed that gets the most sun this time of year.

Bed 2 at 3:00 this afternoon. I planted some lettuce and spinach in some of the empty squares.

Photo below: It's getting too cold for the basil so I pulled out what was left.

Photo below: The carrots in bed 3 get about two hours of filtered sun.

Photo below: Bed 3 all cleaned up and ready for spring.

Photo Below: Bed 4 gets no sun at all. I had planted lettuce and spinach but they are slow to grow.

I may get one or two small harvests out of bed 4.

Photo Below: Butterhead lettuce.

This weekend we will finish building the potato bins. I promise to post some photos when they are completed.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

I have been trying to figure out how to get more growing space out of my little backyard. Last week while at work I had a flash of an idea. Re-do the back garden area where the potato beds are.

I would have to pull out the yellow angels trumpet and pull the beds apart. So that is just what I did today.

I started this angels trumpet from a 5 inch cutting a few years ago. This guy grew to be over 12 feet high. Don't let anyone tell you they are hard to grow.

I had Sweet Husband cut down the tree to about 4 feet.

Then I had to get the beds moved out of the way so I could start digging it out.

It took about an hour to pull this bad boy out.

The beds are out and now it's time to lay out were the new wooden potato bins will go. The long season potatoes will go straight back against the side fence where they will get the most sun. The mid season bin will go to the right against the back fence.

This will still give me plenty of room for a 5 x 3 bed along the back fence.

Tomorrow we will frame out the new bins and put them in their new homes...

Photo below: The new bed is completed.

Sweet Husband put up an old trellis I had lying around.

I'm thinking I will use half the bed for early potatoes and the other half for something I can trellis... maybe some winter squash.

Photo below: I put some potted plants in the open area for now. Looks cute.